With the proliferation of electronic devices, such as wireless telephones, pocket pagers, and other devices that employ audio-based alerts, there is an increasing number of alerts heard in a particular area at a given time. Many conventional wireless telephones have only one ring tone available. Other conventional wireless telephones offer only a limited selection of preprogrammed rings, or audio alerts, by which users can vary the audio alert, for example by selecting from available ring tones. A disadvantage of having only a few different audio alerts available in a device is that many such devices in a group of people emit the same ring tone, causing all who are accustomed to that tone to check their device(s) to see if their device is creating the sound.
Another disadvantage is that conventional audio alert systems do not allow combination of audio alerts or combination of an audio alert(s) with other notification features to create distinctive “morphed” audio alerts. Another disadvantage of conventional audio-based alert systems is that they do not allow creation of original tone sequences, or unique audio alerts, by users of wireless telephones or other devices. Another disadvantage of such currently available devices is that they do not allow users to associate a unique audio alert with a particular incoming signal. As such, current audio alert systems do not allow users to program customized audio alerts.
Thus, there is a need to provide a greater choice of audio alerts by users of devices such as wireless telephones. There is also a need to provide for audio alerts that are created by users of such devices. There is also a need to provide a capability for users to program devices to associate a unique audio alert with a particular incoming signal by which the signal source can be identified.